The subtitle is Untold Successes and Failures of a Populist President and the author is Casey Mulligan (2020).
Mulligan is a Chicago economist who served on Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors from 2018 to 2019. The book examines the major policy initiatives that Mulligan contributed to during that time, but also provides first-hand accounts of working in the White House that represent a stark contrast to the media’s relentless narrative of the Trump Presidency.
He viewed Trump as a Populist who was deeply experimental in his approach, using Twitter as a way to beta test ideas – and also as a manner to get the media, which proved reluctant to report on his successes but would happily refute his exaggerations, to correct him and ultimately disseminate the story that he wanted to put out there (it is a logic that marries well with Scott Adams’ theory that Trump would push debate in 2016 to an illogical extreme in order to control the issues under focus). His greatest successes could largely be derived from his keen effort to deregulate, thereby bringing costs down and putting more money in people’s pockets – whether that be the elimination of the individual mandate or removing regulations that protected special interests in health care and the auto industry. His administration was the first that exceeded its own economic growth forecasts over its first two years. And following major inflation in prescription drug prices because of Medicare Part D, prices actually declined for the first time in 46 years in 2018 after he got the FDA to reduce hurdles that come with generic drugs getting approval after patents expire. These realities often were not well covered, or simply denied, by the media – a denial that extended beyond the press corps – economists would deny their own academic findings and articles when they saw the Trump administration relying on them.
Anecdotally, emphasizing how politicians simply do not read the bills that they propose and pass (and as Mulligan has been a longstanding and vocal critic of the ACA), he notes that the “Medicare for All” legislation pushed by Democrats is anti-market, with the most recent version including the following language: “There is a moral imperative to correct the massive deficiencies in our current health system and to eliminate profit from the provision of health care.” If you don’t realize, the profit motive is why we might hope to have more doctors and nurses, which is what makes health care more accessible and affordable. And the ideas underlying that legislation, in a time where Democrats now control all branches of government, should make everyone nervous about what might come next
